More Power To The Parents

August 02, 1987|By Clarence Page.

Few schoolteachers can claim the national fame of Marva Collins. But to public officials in Chicago, the city where her West Side Preparatory School is located, she is like Rodney Dangerfield, unable to get any respect.

Nationally she is a hero. She has been covered in national news magazines, profiled on ``Sixty Minutes`` and portrayed by Cicely Tyson in a made-for-TV movie on CBS, all because the ghetto school she founded and operates turns out dozens of little inner-city scholars who quote Plato, Shakespeare and Kipling like most kids quote Madonna, Twisted Sister and Run DMC.

But official Chicago treats her like a nonperson, she says. Once or twice, she has been telling reporters in recent days, it would be nice to see someone besides a building inspector come from downtown, just to offer an encouraging word or two to her students. Instead, City Hall gives her a cold shoulder, and public school teachers and officials whisper that her success is not all it is cracked up to be.

The official snub may cause her to leave Chicago, she says, and move to Compton, Calif., a predominately black suburb of Los Angeles, where a committee of private citizens is luring her with a $1.8 million plan to build a brand new school and endowment fund, in her name and philosophy, for 220 students.

I can understand Collins` feelings. We all want to be appreciated.

But she shouldn`t expect much appreciation from those with whom she so effectively competes.

Ever since she started West Side Prep in 1975--``fed up after 14 years of teaching in Chicago public schools,`` she said--she has made urban public schools and those who run them look bad.

She has taken youngsters whom the public schools had written off as unteachable and she has taught them. She has taken functional illiterates like former college basketball player Kevin Ross and brought them up to high school diploma level and beyond.

Educators have come from all over the world to examine her methods or make offers for her to join their faculties, administrations and school boards. The Reagan administration even considered her at one time for secretary of education.

But as she has become more popular, public school teachers and administrators have only lobbied news reporters and commentators more heavily with gossip that Collins is not all that her good press says she is.

Maybe not. But, like many other observers, I figure she must be doing something right or there would not be so many parents willing to pay to let her do it to their children.

Her success raises questions many public school officials would rather avoid. Like, why should the benefits of a private school education be reserved only for the rich? Why should poor parents not be allowed to take some of the same money that now subsidizes academic failure for their children and give it to someone like Collins who can help steer the little ones toward success?

After all, West Side Prep is hardly unique as a private school in a minority community. The newly formed Institute for Independent Education says 220 independent schools have sprung up for black youngsters, mostly in the past 20 years. There are 40 similar schools for Hispanics, about a dozen for American Indians and 60 for Asian-Americans, most of which are part-time.

Black people began organizing private schools during slavery. Faced with high crime and declining scholarship in their public schools, minorities are again flocking to private schools, often starting new ones where none existed. The Reagan administration has promoted the free-market idea of school vouchers, which would allow all parents to choose between their local public school and some alternative private school.

The more I hear about the voucher idea, the better I like it. If the privilege of choice were extended to poor parents by way of vouchers, many would begin to shop around for the best school, forcing the schools to compete with each other. Good teachers and principals (let us not forget the many unsung heroes in the public as well as private educational sector) would be rewarded. Bad ones would be singled out, no longer able, one would hope, to get automatic pay raises without showing improved performance.

The current public-school monopoly is just another example of how we take away from poor people opportunities to make their own choices and help themselves escape poverty.

Unfortunately, on this issue, like many others, the Reagan administration has not put our money where its mouth is.

And, so far, teachers` unions have fought vouchers like the National Rifle Association fights gun control.

I don`t blame the unions. They are looking out for their members` pay raises, benefit packages and job security. That is their job. Nevertheless, somebody should look out for the parents.